So you’re stuck in a queue at the bank. If you’re a weirdo (I borrow John Cutler’s term with the same affection inflexion) like me, you start thinking. Why is there a queue? It’s 2pm on a Tuesday. Surely some of these people should be working? But it’s too late for lunchtime… unless all of these people delayed their lunch to be here. I wonder what led to all of these people being here at a 2pm on a Tuesday. But then I’m here as well… Maybe there’s a queue because the service is too slow. It’s strange how some people are lightning-fast, and some are slow when they seem to be asking for the same kind of service. In fact, forget about the queue! why do I even need to come to the bank at all? Surely some of these things could happen online ….
… and so on.
For me, in my life, this type of scenario is all too common. Browsing websites, waiting for the bus, at a bar with friends… My default mode is always to expand the scope and scale of what’s in front of me - to work the problems back to their root cause, with quick internet investigations and thought experiments peppered in.
What is this? Why is this? and is it a good thing or not?
I like to think the above is an example of a natural systems thinker - and what I’m hoping to cover in the following words is twofold (1) comfort the other weirdos and (2) explore whether or not it is a good thing.
Comfort the Weirdos
Firstly, I’ll raise my hand and say that it can be stressful defaulting to this kind of systems way of thinking. If you forget the goal of what you’re doing - small problems can spiral into big ones that require changing the world, if you’re not careful, it can be exhausting having a mind that is constantly fanning out one thought into fifty. I wish I had a neat story of how I discovered a framework or tool that helped all of this fit together - but the truth is I find myself over-working to compensate. Fingers in too many pies - compensating by increasing the hours. (That said - I have recently come across Shreyas Doshi explaining his incarnation of the LNO Framework - if you’re looking for a tool to help with this kind of problem, that might be it). Otherwise, perhaps reading this post is your reminder to enjoy your gift for deconstructing the world and take a minute to sit back and relax.
Challenges of being a weirdo
In terms of challenges, I’ve already highlighted a propensity to over-burden oneself, and I can add to that a propensity to overwhelm (or even accidentally undermine) others. When your default is to expand and deconstruct, you can forget that this process ingests, processes and produces lots of information. If you look hard enough, every action or decision has an actor, an organisation, a method, a methodology, a history, a future and more. Where I see valuable context, others might see minutiae, irrelevant abstractions and confusion. It’s easy to accidentally force this on others - especially when you think it’s important. It’s also possible to leap past the journey that’s valuable to others. For example, one response I have had to uncovering something new (be it a tool, topic, customer insight… whatever) is to rapidly research and map the space, alone. If you’re not careful, you can go too fast, too quickly, robbing others of the chance to explore the spaces themselves, which is an important part of the learning they won’t always thank you for taking away.
Silver linings of systems thinking
On the good side - the reason I chose the career path I did is because of the way I think, rather than the reverse. I started my career as an engineer working on a large (dozens of engineers), decades-long engineering project. One of my early responsibilities was collating and tracking bug reports across our internal team and customers. Very quickly, the weirdo in me started to wonder why so many undesirable lines of code were produced. I was reliably informed by the wider software engineering team that a big part of the problem was poor product requirements. And not only were the requirements bad, but they were also late! With poor instructions and not enough time, we should be grateful anything was shipped at all.
So, I started moving along the chain towards the requirements. Why were they bad? Well, the product teams had poor access to the customer, they were being pressed for deadlines without any time to experiment or innovate. Why did they have poor access to the customer? Every year or two I would move slightly further up the stack, hoping one day to uncover the secret reason we weren’t always building great products. Always seeking to uncover the root of the problem, and building important context as to why things are the way they are. And I’m a firm believer that more context leads to better decisions.
So, imagine my dismay and then comfort when I discovered that there is not only no secret reason, but that there is an entire generation of product thinkers grappling with a very similar set of questions. This is no accident, and I can say it is my more general experience that this same mode of thinking responsible for my career path is the same mode of thinking that helps me in my quest to build great products.
So, is it good to be a weirdo?
After ruminating on it for a bit, I think so. One thing I can say for sure is the reason I’m in the role I’m in today is that I’ve spent my time asking why and following the breadcrumbs. And sure there are some downsides, but I think that the outcome is pretty good indeed.